In 1961, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first person to visit space in his ship Vostok 1. Flying high above our blue planet, he remarked, "Circling the earth in my orbital spaceship I marvelled at its beauty. People of the world, let us safeguard and enhance this beauty, not destroy it!" Forty years later, two space enthusiasts from California, Loretta Hidalgo and George Whitesides, realized that this occasion was not being fully celebrated by......

If anybody remembers last year's Snow Day, an ill-fated attempt to make snow in Trinity-Bellwoods Park with a defective snowmaker that lead to a giant snowball fight, you may be pleased to learn that exactly one year later, there is actually a bunch of snow on the ground, and the plan is the same. It seems the lesson about controlling Mother Nature has been learned, and our collective prayers have been answered. Tomorrow, join......

Feeling S.A.D.? Toronto's Christmas spirit wore off weeks ago and waiting outside for the streetcar has become more face-numbing than going to the dentist. Thankfully, the City of Toronto is stepping in to cure us of our winter blahs by organizing the 5th annual WinterCity Festival, which runs from January 25 to February 7 in Nathan Phillips Square. While the cool kids have probably already marked the free Saturday night concerts by Tokyo Police......

It seems there is a sort of subtle resentment for pants growing in popular culture. Although Improv Everywhere has been organizing their annual No Pants Subway Ride in New York for seven years, only recently has the tradition really taken hold in cities around the world. This past weekend, Toronto, along with Adelaide, Australia, New York, San Francisco, and a bunch of American cities you probably aren't interested in hearing about, joined Improv Everywhere......

Andy Warhol's Factory parties were the ultimate hot spot for an elite cabal of celebrities, radicals, drag queens and porn stars. There has never been a better place to rock out while on an amphetamine high amid mass-produced silkscreen paintings and a fleet of floating silver balloons. Now, just replace Warhol's notorious gang of New York vagabonds with a bunch of over-stimulated children, and you have the idea behind Bunch's next edition of their popular......

While Newmindspace have organized subway parties in Toronto, SkyTrain parties in Vancouver, and métro parties in Montréal, sometimes nothing beats an old-fashioned streetcar party for a beat-bumping, track-turning, three hour party tour of the city. The TTC will rent a streetcar (PCC, CLRV or ALRV) for a minimum of three hours for a pretty steep fee to just about anybody. The customer can request a custom route, like Newmindspace has, that takes advantage of......

Every weekday morning, bright and early, we feature a photo (or two) from a photographer in the Torontoist Flickr Pool. It's our way of giving the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention that they deserve. Punk Politico BY DZGNBOY......

Photo by End User from the Torontoist Flickr Pool Last night, under the futuristic angles of the Royal Ontario Museum Crystal, over 2000 people gathered to do battle with glowing cardboard tubes in an epic lightsaber battle organized by Newmindspace. The evening was a huge success, attracting hundreds of curious, incredulous or plain baffled onlookers. More images after the jump.......

Earlier this afternoon, an army of pillow-wielders (and camera-wielders) descended on Nathan Phillips Square to take part in Newmindspace's hopefully-annual pillow fight. While the floor of the square filled up with feathers (which were, of course, cleaned up at the end by a pack of volunteers), some fighters hurled out lines from movies like Scarface ("say hello to my little friend!") and 300 ("tonight we dine in hell!"); some picked out and fought intense......

Our own very Kevin Bracken, co-founder of newmindspace with Lori Kufner, just posted this video online today of the massive game of Capture the Flag that they organized at the end of September. 1,200 people showed up, which, at last count, is quite a lot. And hey, remember when it was warm enough to be outside with slivers of exposed flesh? Good times. Check it out: We're not sure how many people are going to......

Tomorrow night, hundreds will gather to throw 1,000 colourful, magnetic points of light. Newmindspace presents Radical Illumination, Toronto's introduction to these delightful street art devices, throwies. This temporary art installation will be followed by a mobile party by the Rothko Institute, leading up to a daring celebration in a place you'd never expect that straddles the line between public and private space.Radical IlluminationFriday, December 8th, 2006Queen + Spadina // 11:11pm......

Blaring horns, bicycle bells, glowing necklaces, screeching tires, and hundreds of Torontonians sprinting through the Financial District yelling, "Incoming!" These are the sights and sounds one can expect from Newmindspace's latest installation of everybody's favourite childhood game, Capture the Flag. The game has been liberated from its grassy prison and placed squarely in the "business ghetto" grid. Participants will use five subway stations, two streetcar lines, a bus, the PATH network, bicycles, longboards, scooters......

If there's one thing that you don't expect to see on a Friday evening in downtown Toronto, it's a chartered streetcar full of fully-costumed pirates rolling along University Avenue in an event organized as a fundraiser for an "Imaginarium." Yar?!......

Newmindspace specializes in throwing irreverent, collective urban events. What qualifies as irreverent in a city as quirky as Toronto? How about a giant easter egg hunt, giant game of urban capture the flag, giant subway (and streetcar) parties, and giant pillow fights? No matter what they're doing, the focus is on getting people - lots of people - together to do something cool, unusual, and fun. Their next project, accordingly, is all about bubbles.......

For those that wished we had given them the heads up about bicycle polo last time, our coconut is poised at an upward-loping angle as we communicate the following news to you: Due to overwhelmingly chipper reception, bicycle polo is back. The Royal Society of Adventurology, with pinkies raised and mallets in hand, requests your presence at their Sunday match. 2 pm. But lest you thing Toronto wasn't completely swept up in urban gaming......